As mobile communications devices, also commonly referred to as User Equipment (UE), mobile stations, terminals, smart phones, and so forth, become more technologically advanced they are becoming capable of providing more than just voice connectivity. In addition to providing voice connections, the technologically advanced mobile communications devices may enable users to web surf, stream multimedia, share images, serve as access points for computers, and so forth, at continually increasing data rates.
The world-wide market penetration of advanced mobile communications devices continues to increase. Furthermore, data (e.g., web-data, multimedia, images, computer data, and so on) may also continue to increase every year. As an example, mobile Internet has become a common platform to allow users to share information and content using advanced mobile communications devices. Streaming video applications, based on hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP)/transmission control protocol (TCP), are becoming a dominant traffic pattern in mobile Internet. However, these applications may consume a considerable amount of bandwidth.
Therefore, deployment of such large numbers of the advanced mobile communications devices may place a huge burden on bandwidth capabilities of wireless communications networks, which must continue to increase bandwidth capabilities to ensure adequate performance to satisfy user demands. On one hand, this has become costly for the mobile Internet providers and has greatly eroded their bottom line. On the other hand, mobile users have experienced significantly greater latency to access Internet content via cellular wireless connections.